Prior and Proper Preparation... and Patience

Bebe- Preparation prevents 'P' Poor Performance
My goal with Bebe today was to move forward some with our circling game without him feeling wrong or having to worry about his self preservation. The sense of self preservation is very strong in a horse, even if it is not in a threatening or dangerous situation. A great way for you to keep your horse from becoming worried is through preparation, prepare your horse for what you want him to do. Make sure all of the 'parts' are together so he can understand it more and not become 'preservative' when you ask him to do it. I knew Bebe would may have started to become right brained when I asked him to do some circling game at a higher gait SO I started (after friendly and other trust building tasks) to play with some barrels, I had him do different things that required lots of thinking and communication. He was confident with jumping the barrel, going sideways with it in front of him and going sideways over the barrels, then I started to do some squeeze game. Point to barrel, he jumps barrel, yields hindquarters then faces me then the other way. I made the squeeze game longer and longer until he was comfortable with walking and trotting in a circle all the while jumping the barrels, we soon moved away from the barrels and did the plain old circling game. I played with transitions and change of direction, all the while he was blowing and stretching out becoming more and more relaxed. That was what I was looking for! Only once did he start to get right brained at the canter, as soon as I saw any hint of fear I brought him back in to me and let him sit there and think his fear through. I sent him back out, he had no other problems after that. His gaits were a lot more consistent, his downward transitions where a lot better and he was confident and happy... What more could I ask? I ended the session. Now our arena has a big 16 foot gate on one side opening out to our large pasture, the horses were at the end at the time. Well I let him out of that gate smiling and wanting to see him happy and canter freely out to his buddies, but to my surprise he just turned around and waited for me to shut the gait! Bebe! Oh man! I could have cried. I thought 'Well, he would want to be with me more and could relate to me more if I went and walked out to the horses or a grassy spot.' So I did, we just moseyed together and enjoyed the beautiful day. Not once did he leave me, I left him once we got to the other horses. I walked over to Doc to say hello and Breeze decided she wanted her itchy spot on her belly scratched and walked up to me where I could scratch. After that I went to scratch with Sundance, Breeze decided she wanted to join in and started to groom with Sundance. What a bonding time for both of us! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sundance- Preparation for a so called 'boring' task (in Sundances opinion)
Sundance and I moseyed up to the arena and fooled around awhile then played with our figure eights on the 22 foot line, he has the pattern memorized so all I had to do is make sure the rope didn't get caught and he maintained the trot. Maintaining his trot is what we are working on with our figure eights, we have to retake our double figure eights at a trot in freestyle for Level 2. So I prepared him for tomorrow, tomorrow I will have him review the trot again then do it on horse back. Then the next day we will probably do the same thing with the addition of an extra circle at the end, a double figure eight. Tomorrow I will hopefully be going over to a friends house to help her with her horse, help her and her daughter get started out right with their first horse.

xoxo